1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a circuit control apparatus and a method for controlling flows of calling signals/communication data transmitted to a public circuit network or a computer network on the basis of a telephone number.
2. Description of the Related Art
Circuit control apparatuses have previously existed for performing communications by using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) via the computer network in addition to performing communications with a telephone or a facsimile via the public circuit network.
In a circuit control apparatus, a telephone number of a called party that cannot be reached via the computer network is stored as a special number beforehand when the circuit control apparatus was manufactured, so that the circuit control apparatus originates a call to the called party of the special number via the public circuit network without trying to originate a call via the computer network. A telephone number (110) of the police and a telephone number (119) of emergency are examples of the special number.
Japanese laid-open patent application No.2003-224682 discloses an adapter used for establishing a dial-up connection to a server for internet telephone. The adapter stores information necessary for dial-up and user authentication, so that operation activities by the user for performing dial-up connection can be decreased.
In a case when a user originates a call to a special number registered beforehand in an apparatus or an IP telephone adapter, there is not any problem such as increase of a connection establishing time since call origination via the public circuit network is performed at the beginning. However, according to the above-mentioned conventional circuit control apparatus, for originating a call to a called party having a telephone number other than the special number, the circuit control apparatus first tries to establish a connection to the called party via the computer network. After that, when it is determined that the called party cannot be reached via the computer network, the circuit control apparatus establishes a connection to the called party via the public circuit network. Thus, for communicating with a called party that can be connected only via the public circuit network, the time for trying to establish a connection to the called party via the computer network is wasted, so that there is a problem in that a connection time from starting a call origination process to establishing a connection becomes long.
In addition, the technology in the Japanese laid-open patent application No.2003-224682 is for decreasing operation activities for performing dial-up connection by automatically sending information to a server. In the technology, it is not considered to decrease the connection time.